


The Path

by Anythingtoasted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-12-03 22:50:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/703529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The woods are lovely, dark and deep,<br/>and i have promises to keep<br/>and miles to go before i sleep<br/>and miles to go before i sleep."<br/><b>- Robert Frost, "Stopping by woods on a snowy evening" </b></p><p>Purgatory, Castiel's POV, drabble.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Path

Bracken cracks beneath his heels.

Sometimes he’s here, others he is not. Castiel assures Dean – and the vampire – that his sanity returned a while ago, brought on by the misery of the place, by its stillness, but sometimes he thinks it’s a lie.

Is he sane, if he dreams? Sane, if during the hours that Dean is asleep, he stares out across the flat, dark ground and wishes he were beneath it  - wrapped in the warm bosom of the earth, gravel in his ears, dirt in his eyes, wet; dirt clogging thick on his tongue. Safe. Is he sane, if he takes Dean’s hand when they walk? Sane, if he pulls away? Sane, if he washes his face in the river, if he plunges his face into its murky depths, if he inhales just a little too sharply; if he holds on too fast?

He doesn’t know. Can’t.

Castiel follows on.

He misses the freeing pain of going without shoes; misses the strange, human weeks he spent naked, covering himself in dirt and honey, brushing his rough fingertips into the wells of flowers, spreading their sex thick and sticky on his skin.

He misses sex, in his own strange, detached sort of way; misses the way it _feels,_ how he used to  _feel,_ the sharp, untenable tug at his waist when Dean was close, when he took someone else’s flesh in his hands, and put it to a purpose. He misses, too, Dean laughing against his neck at some foolish thing he’d said, Dean smiling against his mouth, Dean tracing the lines of his ribcage with a hand, silent and rapt, eyes wide when he brought them to rest on Castiel’s, finally, and his mouth shaped words of wonder, and he asked;  _Why me? Why you?_

He can’t answer, now. (Couldn’t then, either.)

He trudges after Dean and the vampire, half-resentful, half in love. There are moments when Dean turns to look at him, and Castiel knows, for all his prayer, that he doesn’t believe. It breaks his heart. 

He crushes the small black flowers of purgatory under his feet as they push forwards. Regrets it, dully.

Evenings, Benny will sometimes pointedly leave them alone, and Dean will turn to Castiel and look so lost, so sad, that Castiel has no words to tell him but his name. They touch; small, irreverent gestures. A palm on his cheek, a finger on his waist, a kiss on his forehead, shaking and wet. Dean found him by the water three days after they took him with them. He ran over, incensed – dragged him up from it by his collar and screamed in his face,  _Don’t you fucking dare, don’t you do it, you bastard, don’t you dare –_ and Castiel stared impassively back at him, let him shout himself hoarse. Closed his eyes against the barrage. Said, _Sorry._

He fancies himself Ophelia or Virginia, though only in waning moments. A millstone, stones in his pockets, a bouquet in his hands. He thinks it would be nice. Only in moments.

Only when Dean looks away.

But he pushes on, still, though his skin cracks in his shoes; though the mud weighs him down, though with every step he feels closer to the core of the earth, closer to the water.

At the end – the one he always knew would come – he clings to the warmth of Dean’s hand. He lets it go.

He stares at the place where he has been left, hands in his pockets, and his steps crush lilies and orchids, bracken and bark and weeds, as he turns away.


End file.
